David Pogue Wants to Take Back the Beep

David Pogue has distilled into useful form a long-standing complaint I have (and one reason I have long had a voice mail greeting that asked people not to leave me voicemail): cell phone companies set up the greeting, caller instructions, and playback system prompts in large part to maximize their revenue per user; by his calculations, the "mandatory 15-second voicmail instructions" from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others is earning those companies something near a billion dollars a year in charges. Pogue suggests that users should "take back the beep," and to that end provides contact information for the largest cell carriers in order to register a complaint — and, more helpful in the short run, suggests ways in which to make better use of paid-for phone minutes by alerting callers how to bypass the annoying instructions.

Comments

Take back the seconds

[alain94040]

Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?

What would save us consumers a lot more money is having cellphone operators bill usage by the second. The European Commission already
forced the European operators to adopt 1-second billing increments.

--
crowdsource your iPhone app ideas

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

Damn it, every single good technology regulation idea I've seen in the past ten years, from universal cell phone chargers to browser choice in operating systems, has come from the EU. Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Moryath]

Welcome to the U$: government by the corporations, for the corporations.

Track how much slush fund money Obama got under the table from certain groups if you don't believe me. Keep track of why certain Florida/California representatives might as well tag their names with (D-Disney) rather than (D-State).

Look at who paid for - and got - the last three copyright extensions, the DMCA, etc.

This is what happens when your campaigns are privately financed and not on level playing fields (e.g. same budgetary restrictions per candidate).

Re:Take back the seconds

[JCSoRocks]

Regardless of cost it's still incredibly obnoxious having to listen to that crap. Particularly when someone either already has a long message or has gone out of his way to make a short one. Does anyone ever even use those garbage options? Page them? wtf? is this the 90's? If I'd wanted to do that I would have sent him a text.

My second favorite are the menus that start with "Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..." It seems, almost invariably, that those messages just become permanent. Someone changes the system and forgets they added that message or never bothers to update it.

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

Money may be speech according to the Supreme Court, but it's profane speech.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Captain Splendid]

Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?

Because you're not a bunch of socialists who hate capitalism?

Crap, there's shit dribbling out my ears again...

Re:Take back the seconds

[mcmonkey]

Does anyone ever even use those garbage options? Page them? wtf?

And are there any cell phones left out there without caller ID? Don't they already have my number in the missed calls log?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Jurily]

This is what happens when your campaigns are privately financed and not on level playing fields (e.g. same budgetary restrictions per candidate).

This is what you get when you let the peasants vote: the one with the bigger campaign wins.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Actually, I do RTFA]

My second favorite are the menus that start with "Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..." It seems, almost invariably, that those messages just become permanent. Someone changes the system and forgets they added that message or never bothers to update it.

Hey, I programmed that system. That message is prepended to the menu anytime the menu changes. Exactly one week after the message has changed the system automatically changes the menu to remove the prepended message. There's no way that message constantly appears.

*checks logs*

• Menu changed 01/08/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 01/15/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 01/22/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 01/29/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/05/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/12/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/19/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/26/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 03/05/09 12:32:01
• ...

Wait a second...

Re:Take back the seconds

[rock_climbing_guy]

If you leave a long message, put your phone number at the *beginning* of the message so if they need to hear it again, they don't have to play the whole message.

Re:Take back the seconds

[demonlapin]

The really, really funny bit is that the #1 crusader of all time for "campaign finance reform" - John McCain - got buried by it.

Re:Take back the seconds

[FudRucker]

This_is_why

Re:Take back the seconds

[LMacG]

That "our menu options have changed" message kills me. Changed when? From what? Sorry, Bank of XYZ, but I didn't memorize your options in the first place. Sorry.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Lord Ender]

It's a double edged sword. Yes, there are some great EU market regulations (like standardized cellphone chargers), but there are some pretty terrible regulations, too. Many of the EU market regulations are extremely expensive to comply with. You would not be happy, I assure you, if prices at Fry's and Microcenter were as high as prices are at retail stores in France.

Re:Take back the seconds

[bonch]

Hey, look. Another dorm room political expert who puts dollar signs in proper names, because corruption only occurs in the U.S.! What was all that stuff about the U.N.'s oil for food program? I only criticize the U$!

Re:Take back the seconds

[Brian Gordon]

The paranoid ramblings of a deluded old man shouting at hippies from his black sweatpants?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Lord Ender]

Their standard of living has nothing to do with retail prices. What are you smoking? Retail prices are the result of manufacturing or import costs, plus the overhead imparted by regulatory compliance.

And having spent plenty of time in France and in the US, I really doubt they have a higher standard of living by any sane metric.

Re:Take back the seconds

[nizo]

You've got a right to bare arms...

Wow, I've got to remember to bring only long sleeved shirts when I travel outside the US from now on. Thanks for saving me!

Re:Take back the seconds

[ElSupreme]

Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

Purchasing power parity? Are you kidding me? That's just per-capita GDP with a paint job. Here are RFK's immortal words on that subject:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Dogtanian]

Bare arms is funny

Yeah, but so's the right to bear arms, if you ask me. I mean, why the f*** would I want bear arms? To maul someone with?

And doesn't the bear have more right to them than me?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bite. Medical Device regulations, for one. To sell in Europe you need to be ISO-certified, which means you have to buy the standard (in this case, ISO 13485), for a couple thousand - then you have to contract with a certifying organization, which you will pay several thousand dollars to have someone come and audit your paperwork for a few days before making some findings and leaving (they don't want to revoke your certification, though - if they do that, you'll get a different certifying body next time, and they won't get your money. You are the customer of the person auditing you - there's a pretty clear conflict of interest).

ISO 13485 mandates that you "establish, document, implement, and maintain a quality management system and maintain its effectiveness." Basically, they mandate... paperwork.

By contrast, in the US, you need to abide by FDA's cGMP part 820, which is freely available on their website and which they will periodically audit you on and put you out of business if you're not compliant.

The FDA, meanwhile, says "[t]he requirements in this part govern the methods used in, and the facilities and controls used for, the design, manufacture, packaging, labeling, storage, installation, and servicing of all finished devices intended for human use. The requirements in this part are intended to ensure that finished devices will be safe and effective and otherwise in compliance with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the act)." They mandate good manufacturing practices that insure you don't kill people with your product, and on the offchance that you DO, that you keep records that would enable you to do an immediate recall while notifying the FDA.

ISO mandates process diagrams and a quality policy. Useful.

In fact, the whole reason that ISO 13485 came about is because the FDA determined that ISO 9001 was stupid and dangerous, and that any medical device manufacturer who became 9001 certified would not get cleared for sale in the US.

(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fda.gov%2Fdownloads%2FMedicalDevices%2FDeviceRegulationandGuidance%2FPostmarketRequirements%2FQualitySystemsRegulations%2FUCM134625.pdf&ei=TCFySuzPNYGHtgemn52NBA&rct=j&q=fda+iso+9001&usg=AFQjCNEDKFkwfQgd-cptfspZx13gF-idgg)

(Posting as an Anonymous Coward since I've never been to slashdot before. 'Sup guys?)

Re:Take back the seconds

[GigsVT]

You know what pisses me off?

"Please enter your 5 digit account number.... FOLLOWED BY THE POUND SIGN"

If you know it's a 5 digit number, why the fuck do I need to hit the pound sign?

Re:Take back the seconds

[sammyF70]

hmm .. let's take Carlin's speech point by point, by slightly paraphrasing what he says :

• "politicians are puppets controlled by corporations and rich lobbies" . I'd say that is true for the most part, even if it doesn't happen in a direct way. Corporations can threaten to cut jobs, close down factories or offices, relocate in another state or country or even just disproportionally increase the price of their product if the CEOs think that new legislations might decrease the profit for their shareholders. That would result in, at least, jobs being lost in the area and might (and probably would) prove a big enough incentive to stop certain laws or regulations to be passed. Everybody is just doing their job : politicians have to evaluate whether the law or regulation is worth the corporation's reaction, and corporation's need to maximise the profit for the shareholders. (I'll pass the cases where hands have to be greased or forced, or when a politician only thinks of his career)"
• "Corporations, etc ... don't want the common folks to be capable of critical thinking", Although it would make sense (read "1984"), there is no direct evidence of it ... only circumstantial : the rise of Fox Network for example, or the way newspapers will rather tell you that Lindsay Lohan broke her toe nail, or that the giants won the superball rather than that, again, X american soldiers were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan one day earlier. Incidentally repeatedly pounding on how great your nation is and making kids repeat that over and over is a great way to hammer obedience in the mind of the people you want to govern
• "Society has a class system, and most people are not in the ruling/rich class". well ... that there is a widening gap between rich and poor (yes, I know ... 2 years old. But I don't believe this has changed much. Prove me wrong). So ... nothing to see. He is right. And before you reply "The poor deserved it. Everybody can be rich", check this very nice and interesting TED talk about (along other things) Meritocracies
• "Politicians don't care about the people who elect them". I'm not completely as nihilistic as Carlin. I honestly think many politicians start their career because they actually genuinely care. Sadly, as should be obvious to anybody who switched from his productive job to Management and was full of hope to be able to make a change, the higher you are the thinner the air is and the more you just struggle to survive. Even if some politicians do still care about the people after they've been elected to a position of power, helping people is probably more of an afterthought while juggling with more important issues (what those can be is probably not even something the politicians can decide themselves)

so ... 'the paranoid ramblings of a deluded old man shouting at hippies' ? perhaps, but at least he actually knows what he is talking about.

Re:Take back the seconds

[baKanale]

But how am I supposed to criticize the UN? They don't have any S's I can turn to dollar signs!

Re:Take back the seconds

[AmiMoJo]

35 hour working week. Higher minimum wage. Minimum 5 weeks holiday a year (UK, France has even more). Lower crime rates. Better public transport. Free and universal public healthcare. I could go on.

Which of those metrics is not sane?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Loibisch]

Because your might decide NOT to confirm your number after you typed the last digit, for example if you mistyped the number or changed your mind.

Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 seconds

[Flaggday]

Maybe my perception is wrong, but aren't the majority of U.S. cell phone users on a plan that they're paying for in terms of 100s of minutes at least? 15 seconds is annoying, and I agree with his preference for these things going away, but who doesn't just have a monthly plan that dwarfs their actual usage to start with? Pogue's back-of-the-envelope calculations seems to completely ignore this.

Re:T-Mobile

[Xtravar]

As far as leaving a message for others, does anyone really leave longer than a 45-second message anyway (keeping the total under a minute)?

Mothers.

Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Overzeetop]

Get a real phone plan, or one from a decent provider. AT&T just capped my rollover minutes when I hit something like 4000 (in just 2 years on the minimal 700 minute a month plan). Does anyone really have a plan where they regularly go over their monthly allotment, and it's not cheaper to get the next tier?

If the 15 seconds is too painful, read up on the options to skip the message. As for the man up comment - that goes for you, too, Timothy. And while we're at it, why don't you go ahead and turn in your geek card for not knowing you could hit # and skip right to the beep.

Yes, I am in a foul mood this afternoon; thanks for asking.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Jay L]

While we're turning in geek cards...

Yes, # skips the greeting when calling AT&T subscribers and, apparently, T-Mobile subscribers. If you call a Verizon customer and press #, you get the login prompt, and (AFAICT) no way to actually leave your friend a message without calling back.

So, just as TFA says: You can skip everyone's greeting, but you have to memorize which carrier they use.

C'mon, hand it over.

Re:Earth to David!

[Anubis IV]

He mentions the # in the article. That's not the point. The point is that millions upon millions of customers are not as smart as you are, so they listen through that voicemail message every single time they want to leave a message. That adds up to hundreds of thousands or millions of wasted man-hours each year, as well as additional charges to some customers.

And if you had read TFA, you'd have noticed that he mentioned the fact that he's talked to high-up execs at these companies and that they admitted to him that they do it for the purpose of collecting additional charges. So, while "conspiracy" may be a rather strong word, it's not altogether inaccurate.

Re:No problem on Sprint

[semifamous]

Instructions that I posted here:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/20563

      1. Call Your Voicemail
      2. At the menu, press 3 for Personal Options
      3. Press 2 for Greeting
      4. Press 1 to change the greeting.
      5. To enable/disable the instructions, press 3

Re:Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 second

[CrazyJim1]

If your message takes 46 seconds to say, it will rack up as 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. Is this how it works?

Re:No problem on Sprint

[semifamous]

Oh, and as long as you're in Personal Options, listen for the "Expert Mode" option and enable that. Should shave a few seconds of your voicemail checking.

Who is this still a problem for?

[CaptainPatent]

I understand the concern of unnecessary use of a few seconds per phone call 5 or 10 years ago, but lately with the advent of VOIP I'd contend this concern has slowly been fading out.

Flashback to 1995 when cellphone bills and long distance calls were by the minute and rather expensive. Only landline local calls were exempt from by-minute charges, and phone companies had a lot of opportunities to increase revenue by lengthening phone calls just a little bit.

Compare that to today when most cellphone users have free night and weekend minutes plus anytime minutes, most landlines have free long distance and some users with unlimited cell plans are immune from these charges. The only people affected are those making international calls or using cellphones during the day while over their minutes. This is an increasingly small demographic.

Compound that with the fact that data is where most of the cellphone money is and you quickly see that keeping people connected via cell tower may prevent more business / data users from connecting who really have the high paying plans. It's actually in cellphone companies' best interest now to keep those lines as clear as possible to support good service to as many new / existing customers as possible instead of keeping the airwaves as busy as possible.

If you have one of the plans which makes you fit into the demographic affected by a 15 second delay, then I can understand your desire to shorten the time to when you can leave a message or leave none at all, but I personally am a fan of voice mail intros as it lets me know I didn't accidentally dial a wrong number. My advice for you is to learn the quick-keys on various carriers that bring you to the voice mailbox immediately (like # on T-mobile and Sprint.) I wouldn't disagree to going to a per-second billing like the EU did, but I promise you can take off your tinfoil hats - there is no conspiracy to make you use more minutes anymore and removing voice mailbox introductions would actually be removing something valuable for some people.

Re:Earth to David!

[Ihmhi]

If we're going to talk about how cell companies nickle and dime their customers, there are way bigger fish to fry than voicemail - SMS, MMS, ringtones, etc.

Re:so there are people who pay by the minute?

[maxume]

Yeah, it struck me as a 'big scary number' style calculation.

I bet the amount people 'overpay' by using basket style contracts is even huger.

Sprint lets you turn this off

[pdragon04]

I hadn't even realized it until I was bored one time when I was checking my voicemail. I went through the other options to see what was available and one of them was to turn off these pre-recorded caller instructions that he's complaining about.

Maybe people just need to check what options their voicemail provides them instead of jumping to drastic measures like this? Wait... I forgot who I'm talking to here...

Carriers get paid for incoming calls

[bruckie]

An interesting, relatively unknown fact that I picked up while working on telephony systems a while back: carriers get paid (by other carriers) for incoming calls.

Not only do you pay more to your carrier to listen to the inane voicemail prompt (since you might use more minutes), but your carrier also pays more to your friend's carrier. For example, if I'm an AT&T customer and I call a Verizon customer to leave a voicemail, AT&T has to pay Verizon for every second that I'm on the phone. This (perverse) incentive makes more sense than charging people for more minutes, since often the company charging for minutes (AT&T in this case) is not the company that controls the recorded message (Verizon).

--Bruce

Ditch all the instructions.

[DavidTC]

We're at the point in society where people should know how to leave a message on a damn answering machine. Hell, we stopped having the 'http://' on URLs in ads and business cards five years ago, but somehow people have forgotten how to operate an answering machine/voice mail after them being common for 25 years!

Also, we don't need to be informed someone can't answer the phone, but to leave a message and he'll get back to you. First of all, the voice mail message does not magically know that that is true...maybe he can answer it, and just didn't. Maybe he's dead, and won't return your call ever. Maybe he just doesn't fucking like you. Stop telling me nonsensical shit you don't actually know, you machine. Just record the damn message.

When an answering machines picks up, I should hear, in most cases, be something like "This is John Smith's phone. *beeeep*".

And the only reason there should be any message at all is to confirm we have the right phone number.

American Pints are for Wusses (^_^)

[Dogtanian]

When metric is the law, no more pints of beer.

Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?

Only if you're talking about those teensy little American pints (473ml); the imperial pint, as used in the UK, is 568ml- quite a bit more than half a litre.

Yeah, that's right. We've got the big man-sized real pints, whereas the size-obsessed Americans can't even beat the European half-litre. Ner ner ner-ner ner! ;-P

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

Yeah, a "certain percentage" being about 25%. If you tack an extra 15 seconds onto 100 calls of otherwise random length, you will use 25 extra minutes of airtime.

And don't get me started on Verizon's new "please enjoy the music while your party is contacted", so that you get charged while their phone is *RINGING*..

Re:Simple solution

[zippthorne]

How do you know?

Even worse in Canada...

[Barbarian]

I'm on Bell Mobility in Canada (until July 2009 when I can change without penalty) and not only do we have the listed voice mail annoyances, we also pay $6 each a month for caller id and voicemail. Also there is no trick that a caller can use to skip the greeting. If you record your own, it appends "At the tone, leave your message" anyways.

Did I mention we have to pay about $20 more a month on average (even after currency conversion)?